In Conversation With Completedworks

Fashion : Meet

02 April 2020

“I’ve always been obsessed with beautiful objects since childhood,” Anna Jewsbury, the founder of the contemporary jewellery brand Completedworks, shares with us. “I used to collect shells and make chokers or bracelets out of them. I still have a terrible habit of collecting things.”

“And the thing about jewellery,” she continues, “is that you never really need to wear it in the same way as you do clothes. So, by its very nature it communicates much more about the wearer. Working in precious metals there is also that wonderful element of longevity to the piece too.”

Anna Jewsbury

Made in her studio in London, Completedworks jewellery, crafted from gold, silver, ceramic and pearl, has a skeuomorphic appearance, whereby the inherent hardness of the materials is fashioned to seem fluid, nearly soft.

“Materiality,” explains Anna, “is part of a process of investigation into the nature of things. For example, with our Scrunch series, there is an aesthetic juxtaposition – the hard metal forms imitate a much softer and more supple material. This juxtaposition establishes a relationship between the wearer and the viewer of the piece, who observes and interprets the qualities of the material they are viewing, causing them to look twice.”

Having studied Mathematics and Philosophy at university, Anna has translated the idea of ‘reductionism’ into her approach to making jewellery. “Reductionism,” she shares, “is about extracting the simple from the complex but at the same time revealing a pattern, structure or common language. Similarly, with the jewellery, each collection will be a considered series of pieces with a common thread.”

Her Tied collection takes its inspiration from the ropes that Easter Islanders would use to move their Moai statues and considers how in attempting to tie down material things, objects, we all end up tethering ourselves to something or someplace. “The pieces,” she explains, “have deliberate traces of something unexpected or imperfect, such as little knots, loose threads or inconsistencies in form.”

In 2019, Completedworks added a collection of ceramic vases done with the artist Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki. The hardness of their glazed forms defies their semi-crumpled appearance, as though they have collapsed under their own weight. “In creating ceramics,” Jewsbury tells, “you get this opportunity to mold with your hands – by squeezing, kneading, rolling and pulling. It was really this interest in the different hand movements during the process of crafting the work that started our interest in creating a ceramic collection. I suppose it is a bit like a pianist wanting to pick up a violin.”

Matter and materiality and of the way that we form meaning between ourselves, each other and the objects that inhabit our worlds, appear regularly throughout Completedworks’ collections.

“With our jewellery, we are often trying to find a way to communicate an idea through form. [The pieces] aren't designed in a vacuum - they reference how we spend our days - the books we read, the art we see, the people we talk to - they indirectly address the human condition.”

Of the current crisis, Anna suggests, “If you can, [to] use the time to reflect, slow down and reset so when we start again we can do things better. And I think now more than ever we all need to come together to support each other, both within the industry and beyond. Often, times of challenges also provide opportunities for a refresh and I’m hopeful we will see a shift away from over-consumption towards investment in pieces that are more considered and less momentary.”

Completedworks are currently donating 10% of their online sales to WHO's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

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